Date: Fri, 2 Jun 2000 15:09:53 +0930 (CST) From: james <wabit@adl.ussr.net> To: Chris Fedde <chris@fedde.littleton.co.us> Cc: support@tecpro.com, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: NFS -vs- Samba Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0006021509030.14152-100000@gw.Adl.USSR.net> In-Reply-To: <200006020526.e525Quv57319@fedde.littleton.co.us>
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Thanks for the explanation, makes it much easier to understand - can you tell me where I could find a nfs client (freebie, preferably) for NT/98 etc ? regards james On Thu, 1 Jun 2000, Chris Fedde wrote: > Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 23:26:56 -0600 > From: Chris Fedde <chris@fedde.littleton.co.us> > To: support@tecpro.com > Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG > Subject: Re: NFS -vs- Samba > > On Fri, 2 Jun 2000 00:22:14 -0400 "Charles Peters - Tech Support" wrote: > +------------------ > | Hello Yall! > | > | Can anyone point me to a good explination on the differences in > | NFS and Samba. > +------------------ > > I can't point to any succinct explanations other than to point you > to the documentation for both and make your own conclusions. Still > I have a few thoughts that I'd like to share. > > NFS grew up in a peer to peer environment where client and server > had a different meaning than they did in the DOS world. In the > Unix world a client is a program that opens a connection, and the > server is the program that waits for connections. Thus a system > will be a server of some things and a client of others. For example > in one former environment that I managed each workstation exported > it's non-system disk into a pool that was universally available to > all other stations. This was done for home sharing and to provide > common access to applications, code revision control, and data > resources. > > This is in contrast to the PC paradigm, where the server is the > central system and the client is the distributed system. This is > the way most Novell, LANMAN and NT administrators think about their > environments. For example at another place I worked there were > several Novell servers that hosted applications and file shares > for hundreds of PCs. Beyond some very simple functionality these > PCs were useless if the "network" was unavailable. > > This difference in usage of the words "client" and "server" was at > the core of many misunderstandings about Unix networking. > > Enter Samba... Samba was developed to fill a need where PC users > wanted access to files available on a Unix box but it was inconvenient > to run an NFS client on the PC. With Samba it became possible to > use the unix system as if it were a LANMAN file server. The big > problem here is that LANMAN (and WfW, NT and the rest) has a > different idea of permissions, locking, and access semantics than > Unix systems do. Samba has to provide a series of mappings and > alternative implementations to allow the two systems to cooperate. > Thus Samba would be a poor tool to choose if the environment > contained only Unix systems. > > I like to think of NFS, AMD and Samba in a flexibility hierarchy. > I use NFS to export available space from various systems into a > "pool". I then use AMD to create a "virtual hierarchy" over that > pool. Finally I use Samba to provide wintel users with access to > the virtual hierarchy. > > Finally Samba does provide a command line tool called smbclient that > allows a unix system to access shares and printers exported from > wintel systems. I've only use this for debugging and for some > simple scripted file distribution tasks. > > chris > > -- > Chris Fedde > 303 773 9134 > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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